The two together:
O vision on its lonely way shall find,
Kinsmen, it is an ill
And evil-blowing wind
That does not speak to someone of goodwill;
And a poor tale, shapeless indeed and crude,
Whose fragments we two cannot bind
With some such smooth and pompous platitude.
AN EPILOGUE TO ‘TRIVIA’
(With apologies to Mr Logan Pearsall Smith)
I PEEPED in the Library of the Strange House and saw the dark figure of a man bobbing about. There was, too, such a rush of nasty cheap perfume through the door that I thought at first some of the bad portraits had come to life. Or is it, I asked myself, someone engaged in secret worship, the Baronet placating his private Mumbo-Jumbo or the Vicar turning in weariness to Sasabonsum? And I thought of monstrous African gods, of terrifying shapes and evil rites hidden in deep forests, of all the wildness and wonder of the dark untamed Universe....
But when I looked again, I saw that it was only one of our whimsical prosemen drenching his newly and meticulously written sheets with inexpensive Parma Violet and Jockey Club to hide the smell of the lamp.
EPIGRAMS
THE OLD MAN AND THE NEWSPAPER
DAYLONG he seems to read, but as he peers
At fading print, the sheet becomes a glass,
Wherein are mirrored ghosts that smile and pass,
And lovely faces, dust these forty years.